Peer Pressure in Corporate Earnings Management

We show that peer firms play an important role in shaping corporate earnings management decisions. To overcome identification issues in isolating peer effects, we use fund flow-induced selling pressure by passive openend equity mutual funds as exogenous shocks to firms’ stock prices. Managers respond to such exogenous price shocks by adjusting earnings management policies. We then measure individual firms’ reactions to changes in earnings management at peer firms as a result of such exogenous price shocks. The documented peer effect in earnings management is not only statistically, but also economically significant. Our results are robust to alternative measures of fund flow-induced selling pressure and earnings management, and to estimating instrumental variables regressions in which we instrument peer firms’ earnings management with mutual fund flow-induced selling pressure.